Apple v. Bloggers, Sort Of
It now appears that Judge James Kleinberg’s recent ruling against the bloggers who published Apple secrets has less than meets the eye. While half the bloggers in the Ecosystem (i.e. the half who haven’t been too busy playing bankruptcy attorneys on TV to notice) has been up in arms over the judge’s alleged refusal to extend the “I’m a news guy so I don’t have to divulge any news to a judge unless I want to” privilege to bloggers, today’s Associated Press story indicates Judge Kleinberg did not rule on that basis. Rather, he ruled that no one, whether a journalist or not, has a right to publish trade secrets. Money quote:
“Defining what is a ‘journalist’ has become more complicated as the variety of media has expanded,” Kleinberg wrote. “But even if the movants are journalists, this is not the equivalent of a free pass.”
I don’t know enough about California’s trade secret law to know if the ruling was correct on the law, but it sounds about righty as a matter of common sense. In any event, it does not appear that the judge was trying to create a two-tier system whereby bloggers are expected to divulge anything a Real Journalist may keep secret.
UPDATE: So Cal Lawyer has more.
March 12th, 2005 at 8:13 am
Like I know, but isn’t the issue that the employees divulged trade secrets and Apple wants that information from the reporters? That seems fair. I don’t think it would be wrong to publish trade secrets once an outside party is told these trade secrets, kind of like how once something is not a secret, it’s hard to call it a trade secret anymore, but it certainly does seem reasonable that you could punish the employee who spilled the beans. Made the secret no longer secret. (Just a personal political opinion.)